


nothing you have said is revelation

by sillyideas



Category: WALL-E (2008)
Genre: Other, Post canon, by that i mean i havent even proofread, cause i am in so much self denial abt fixating on this movie again, crossposted on wattpad, distant post canon, he just vibes like that, i just want this out of my sight tbh, i typically struggle to break 1k words idk how i managed 3k for this, its sort of an autocore line at least, no beta we die like walle both those times auto killed him (heart emoji), speaking of that the title doesnt really fit, the doc is saved as 'im not autistic im not autistic im not autistic', the inconsisent lowercase on autos dialogue is intentional, this is ridiculously self indulgent.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28605363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sillyideas/pseuds/sillyideas
Summary: What historian -- self-appointed or otherwise -- wouldn’t want to meet the “villain” of their “story”? To ask questions, to get in their head?
Relationships: Auto (WALL-E)/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	nothing you have said is revelation

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO EVERYONE (looks at my hal fic) i have a type huh. anyway walle has been my favorite movie ever since it came out when i was in like first grade, and every few years i just kind of autism over it. however im currently in denial about it because if i hyperfixate on anything thats not chess the musical i feel i will shrivel up like a little victorian orphan. i suppose thats why the title is from endgame and there are a couple references to chess as a game in here. fun fact its hal 9000s fault i ever got into chess the musical. anyway

You’re fascinated with history.

You read all the books you can get on “the age of abandonment”: the period where humanity fled from its mistakes and into space. Society before the event seemed horrid, so materialistic, so short-sighted, and even worse  _ during  _ the stint in uncharted vacuums. Sure, the history books might exaggerate just a little, but knowing that the state of the planet was bad enough that everyone decided to  _ leave  _ kinda sells it.

You’re lucky enough to live near the remains of the Axiom, the once-mighty ship that was notable for being the first to return to Earth. It’s long been reclaimed by nature, vines climbing what remains of rust-eaten walls. It stays standing after all these generations as something of a monument to man’s return.

It’s so tempting to go inside. No high school textbook will satisfy you. You want to see, to touch, to  _ experience  _ what your ancestors did.

And so you do. One night you stuff all your essentials into a backpack and hop over the fence like you’re the rebellious protagonist of a YA novel. 

The ship is surprisingly easy to navigate, between you having absorbed pretty much every publicly available fact about it, and all the very simplistic CAFETERIA, SALON, POOL signs that guided the people before you. The windows, once well-cleaned and clear as crystal, you imagine, have long clouded over with moss and grime. The pristine, white walls from the photographs burned into your memory are no longer so pristine or white, scratched and dirtied from decades of plant and animal alike claiming territory. It’s not the Axiom from your books, but it’s your current reality, it’s a testament to mankind learning its lesson. It’s beautiful, really, between the natural scenery overcoming the rigid Appleness of it all and the moonlight filtering through the windows and casting a soft haze on everything.

You eventually make your way to the captain’s deck -- and you freeze in your tracks.

You recognize the steering wheel hanging from the ceiling, slumped over like a sad rag doll, like you’d recognize an old friend, or perhaps an enemy. You’ve read every little piece of information on the autopilot of the Axiom. You know his exact dates of activation and deactivation, you know the name of the voicebank that was used to simulate his voice, you even learned that he apparently bore a striking resemblance in both appearance and actions to a fictional computer from what was an iconic film in pre-abandonment ages. 

You take tiny, careful steps towards the machine. What historian -- self-appointed or otherwise -- wouldn’t want to meet the “villain” of their “story”? To ask questions, to get in their head? It’s not like AUTO is going to turn on ever again, though, you shot down that hope as soon as it crossed your mind. It’s been far too long, surely his programming is unsalvageable at this point.

You keep taking tentative steps towards him, towards his  _ corpse,  _ essentially, as you think on everything. Before long, you’re an arm’s length from him; you can see your awestruck face in the reflection of what was once an eye. If you wanted, you could reach up and hit that auto/manual switch...

You can’t help it. You know nothing is gonna happen, you’re going to sit there waiting for a broken computer to power on like a college student who just spilled an energy drink on their moving out present. But you’re just too curious.

You flip the switch.

AUTO spins to life and you jump back with the force of startled slingshot fodder. What the fuck. What the fuck! You can only watch, standing awkwardly with your hands semi-clasped together, as the autopilot gathers his bearings.

“H-hello,” you begin. You try to make eye contact but that camera lens stares at you so intensely. “I… I’m very sorry, sir,” do robots get sirred? Did he have an actual title or something?, “I didn’t mean to wake you.” You wonder if all of his ‘brain’ survived or only some of it, if your language even means anything to him.

“I imagine this is all very confusing for you,” you continue, raking through your brain for everything about AUTO you know. “It… it’s been decades, since you… the Axiom. Space.” You’re certainly not at your most eloquent, but if AUTO’s language processors survived, you imagine he’ll be able to handle a raw set of relevant words just as well as a coherent sentence. “We’re on Earth,” you tell him. “We’ve been on Earth for a very, very long time.”

...

“not possible,” finally comes his voice, flat and metallic and incredibly low. 

“It is,” you say, carefully. “I was born on Earth. My parents were born on Earth. It… it’s habitable. We live here.”

“Not possible,” he repeats in the exact same tone. Maybe he can’t understand you after all and is stuck on that phrase like a broken record.

“AUTO,” you say with a firmness that surprises you. “AUTO, you hear me? It’s possible. We’re on Earth, like it or not.”

…

“who are you?” 

You walk a little closer to him again, telling him your name, explaining that you were curious about the Axiom and decided to find the answers to your questions yourself, that you’ve gotten far more than you bargained for by accidentally reactivating him and you didn’t mean to disturb him. You study him as he processes your words, the way bits and pieces of his hardware circle and click like you’re literally watching gears turn in someone’s head. His bright red eye and its unrelenting glare is magnetic and your eyes keep flitting to it.

_ He  _ suddenly moves closer to  _ you,  _ moving towards you and bringing himself to your eye level with rigid, calculated movements. If you were to take a step forward, your nose would collide with the glass of his lens. With slightly crossed eyes to see him right, you marvel at how untouched he is, how clean and polished he looks; after all this time nature hasn’t dared to lay a finger on him.

“anomaly,” he says, voice slow and deliberate.

“Huh? If you mean the living on Earth thing….” 

“No.” He moves just barely forward, almost imperceptibly. “If you are being truthful, then why were you the first to reactivate me. clearly, you are an anomaly of some sort, to seek me out.” 

You shrug, though you’re not sure if his optic can even catch the movement when he’s so up in your face. “I’m just really interested in abandonment-age history, I guess.”

“a...bandonment?” With a flourishy whirl of his handles, he backs away from you, now at a comfortable few feet of distance. “No. It was not an abandonment. It was necessary, inevitable.  _ Abandonment  _ suggests something of merit was left behind.” 

You suddenly feel oddly naked without a steering wheel inches from your face. “I don’t want to argue about it, that’s just what it’s called,” you say, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. “...and Earth does have merit, that’s why we can live here now.” 

AUTO’s turned away from you, slowly panning himself across the cloudy windows, surveying his surroundings. He doesn’t reply to you. 

“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions, actually,” you say. 

He halts and whirs around, looking at you expectantly. You stutter, not being able to think of any of your numerous questions with that piercing red gaze. 

“you may proceed with the questions,” he prompts.

“I… ah,” you crack your knuckles, “well, what was life like on the Axiom? From your pointa’ view, at least?”

You watch him think once again, hums and clicks of processors and all that exposed hardware behind his face.

“efficient,” he states. “perhaps enjoyable, though that is something my captain eventually disputed.” 

You nod. You can easily picture the statue of Captain B. McCrea downtown.

“Organized,” he continues, “structured.”

“Did you like it?” you ask.

There’s a long, long pause.

“It was efficient,” he restates. 

You go back and forth with questions and answers for what must be at least an hour. AUTO is surprisingly enjoyable to talk to; his perspectives are interesting and his voice grows on you. At some point you grabbed a pen and notebook from your backpack and started documenting the answers.

He notices you yawn. “you are tired.”

“Yeah, I am,” you admit. “I wasn’t expecting to stay out anywhere near this long.” With that, you ask him one more question: “will you mind if I come back tomorrow night?”

  
  


“negative.”

You smile, and wish him a good night as you slip out of the room. You feel his gaze follow you out, and his voice, cold and mechanical as ever, wishes you a good night as well.

You’re back the next night, and the next night, and the night after that. You have so many questions for AUTO -- he’s like a time capsule full of data, sensory input on the time period, what the humans who programmed him were thinking, everything you could possibly want to know. You can’t get enough of him. 

You haven’t told anyone about your little midnight escapades, but sometimes when you’re alone in your room you look at your notes and smile -- it’s just so exciting to directly interview someone from this long ago, someone who was so involved in everything that happened. 

_ Me: So, what can you tell me about Captain McCrea? _ _  
_ _ A: He was… different. Not at first. He was the same as the captains before him until he met the waste compaction unit. _

_ Me: Do you think he changed in a good way or a bad way? _ _  
_ _ A: His actions following this change were contradictory to my directive.  _

_ Me: Do you ever regret keeping people on the Axiom for as long as you did? _

_ A: No. _

_ Me: Why not? _

_ (He didn’t answer) _

_ Me: Do you know how to play chess, by any chance?  _

_ (I asked him this because I read that the computer from “Space Odyssey” played chess) _

_ A: Negative. I know it is a board game but I do not know how it is played. _

_ Me: Would you mind if I taught you? _

_ A: No, I would not mind. _

That last one has you tempted to put your chessboard in your backpack and bring it to the Axiom one night, teach AUTO how the pieces move and everything. When you first notice your interactions with him are becoming more and more lighthearted (a month ago you wouldn't have dreamed of playing any games with him), your first worry is that you’re getting distracted or that you’re running out of valuable questions to ask him. And a couple weeks later, the day after you first try telling him a joke,

_ Me: Why was six afraid of seven? _

_ A: Error. Invalid question. _

_ Me: It’s because seven ate nine.  _

_ A: Processing. Processing. _

_ Me: Get it? Ate sounds like a word, and a number? _

_ A: Processing. Processing. _ _  
_ _ A: Understood. _

is when you realize that maybe you  _ are _ getting distracted -- by feelings. You’re thinking about him like someone you could  _ pursue.  _ You catch yourself doodling little pictures of him -- he’s a surprisingly intricate machine; your first doodle of a wheel with an eye on it didn’t look anything like him and you’ve been stealing more and more details in your mind from your meetings with him ever since -- and wondering what it would be like to touch him, to feel the smoothness of his metal under your hands not unlike how one would caress their lover’s face. You catch yourself imagining that chess game with him, the elegant way he’d glide over the board to move his pieces. You catch yourself wondering what “I love you” would sound like in his voice.

You ignore the little feeling and keep talking to him like normal. You try not to think about it.

You smile at him as you come in, sit down on what was once a captain’s seat, and unpack the little snack you brought yourself along with your notebook. This has become something of a tradition, really, nights with him are actually kind of cozy. 

“before we begin,” he says, rather suddenly, “I have a question to ask of you.”

You pause midway through a bite of your banana and look up at him with large eyes. “Mmm?” 

“perhaps question is not the right choice of words,” he continues, moving closer towards you, “it is more of an observation I am sharing with you.”   
  
You swallow the food in your mouth. “What is it?” you ask.

He hesitates, you can physically see the hitch in his thinking, but continues on as normal. “I have been studying my data collected on your vital signs and biometrics,” he says. “Initially, your posture, heart rate, vocal patterns, and the like indicated nervousness, which eased as time went on. however, your comfort level appeared to plateau several weeks ago, and has been descending ever since. Nothing else indicates discomfort, but the physical signs cannot be disputed.”

You freeze. “What are you saying?”

“I am not attempting to imply anything; I am simply informing you. You are welcome to share an explanation for these changes, if you’re aware of one.” 

“I mean, I might have an idea,” slips out of your mouth before you can stop it.

“what?” he pries.

Typically, long pauses in conversation are AUTO’s thing. It makes sense; he needs a moment to process input and generate his response, but here you are, fidgeting with the peel of your banana while he stares at you patiently, trying to figure out how the hell to word this.

“I… think I like you,” you say. “Romantically, I mean. I think I have a crush on you, AUTO.”

You look up at him and can hardly handle the intensity of the eye-lens contact. His processors are whirring, higher and louder than you’ve ever heard them.

“the feeling,” he says with a calculated pause, “may be mutual.”

“Wait, what?”

“It is unclear to me what it is I am experiencing. there is no protocol for this sort of situation; it is doubtful it was ever accounted for. yes… a ‘crush’... peculiar word.”

He’s moved closer to you, at a slow, easy rate instead of the jerky mechanical sweeps across the deck he usually makes. You can see red light from his optic bouncing off your cheek in the corner of your eye. 

“it explains why I look forward to your visits as much as I do,” he says. “Why I enjoy looking at you. the sound of your voice. why I so greatly appreciate the questions you ask of me and why I am so eager to answer.”

You can’t help it (not being able to help yourself in an impulse decision like flipping a switch or blurting something out is what got you this far, you note), you need to make some physical contact with him. You put your hand on his “face”, just to the side of and underneath his eye. He’s far warmer to the touch than you expected, perhaps that’s because he’s working overdrive at the moment. Sort of like blushing.

You feel kinda stupid sitting there with your hand flat on him, staring straight into his eye in a way that’s… comfortable. You don’t feel exposed and drilled into when your eyes meet his lens anymore; just pleasantly watched. Safe.

After what must be ten seconds, you withdraw your hand and look down. “Sorry, that was, uh, completely unwarranted,” you realize.

“No.” His reply comes far faster than usual.

You look back up at him. “Huh?”

“do not apologize,” he says. 

Feeling like there’s too much stuff on your plate distracting you, you rather clumsily shove all your crap back into your backpack and return your attention to AUTO. He seems…. inquisitive. 

The two of you just look at each other for what feels like a long time. 

You break the silence with, “So you, uh, you like me back, huh?” 

“...affirmative,” he says. 

You bring your hand back up to him, more relaxed this time, knuckles brushing against his casing. There are a million thoughts going on in your mind as your eye wanders over him, occasionally meeting his for a moment.

“AUTO, can I try something?” you ask, your voice hushed.

“what,” he asks, voice flat as ever. With your hand on him you can actually feel the low vibrating of his speakers.

“Could I… try to kiss you?”

Long silence between you two, only the sound of his processors working a mile a minute.

“if you wish.”

Your hand moves from his face to one of his spokes, kind of grabbing it to steady yourself, and you swallow your nerves and press a kiss to the metal underneath his eye. It’s very quick, and you pull away with wide eyes, looking at him and loosening your grip on him. 

You stare at each other, and if the high, frantic whirring coming from inside him is anything to go by, he’s just as flustered as you are. 

“Though I did not feel anything,” he begins, “the sentiment is greatly appreciated. i would not object to doing that again.” 

“Well, that definitely won’t be the last time I try it, then,” you reply.

You’d remembered to pack your chess set, so you spend the rest of your time with him that night teaching him how to play. It doesn’t take him long at all to pick it up, and you’re still in a sort of post-kiss daze, so it’s not really a surprise when he wins his first game. 

He seems almost… proud, in a way, as he says “checkmate” and turns his eye to you expectantly. You’re not sure if you’re getting better at reading him or if he’s getting better at expressing himself, but in any case it’s quite endearing. 

You sneak another quick kiss — the second of many — before you leave that night. 


End file.
